Let's Talk. Why are so many Canadians depressed?

"Let's Talk" about mental health.

It's about time after months of being bombarded by the media about depression and suicide.

If anything maybe we can get a break from those commercials after today. There's a bright spot. Those depression commercials are depressing. Holy Shit, I feel sad, every single time I watch that one with the lady that is all dressed up for work and she calls in sick.

That dude that is at home and his buddy can see him ignoring the phone through the picture window. Who is the sadder guy in that commercial. I think it's the guy who is outside and he doesn't have the balls to bang on the door and give his buddy a "What the Fuck, Man? I can SEE you!"

No, I am not going to make light of depression and act like people just need a good kick in the ass. Although some people need a good kick in the ass. I know depression. I know what it's like to obsess over ending it all. Day after day after day after day. I have lost friends and family to that lonely heartbreaking battle.

I remember the first great sadness in my life, black as Kubrick's monolith in my memory.  It was that period that followed the collapse of our newspaper, Nativebeat and lead to almost complete nervous breakdown. The heaviest of depression lasted about three years and has returned in smaller more manageable but no less black chunks in the years since.

I had a second great run of depression that coincided with a thirsty obsession during a soul sucking period of life in Our Nations Capital. I drank a million tears that were not mine. I drank a million tears and wondered why I couldn't stop crying. I dug deep for darkness and then cursed God for making me blind.

I survived the heaviest unknowable depression in silence and with support from powers also unknown.

My second bout of depression was handled by sobering up. I went to AA for a while and that helped. I don't go there these days since I still drink. I know, by sobering up, I mean, not drinking booze like people drink coffee.

I will drink now and then but rarely to get sad. But I can't say I will never again because sometimes you need to cry like a great big baby but most times you just end up acting like one.

I am a strong supporter of marijuana although I do not know what the practical applications are regarding mental health. I do know that it will put a smile on your face. I also know that Chronics are cranky.

I do not support the overwhelming acceptance of pharmaceuticals as the quintessential treatment for depression.

I hate to get all Ron L. Hubbard on people but blindly taking whatever pill is being pushed is foolish at best, when the pill is for your mind it can be dangerous.

If it works, it works. Do whatever needs to be doing. Take as much as you need it's your say but just remember to take a look at who is getting paid.

The Mental Health industry is booming and people driven campaigns like "Let's Talk" can be exploited to get more people hooked on more drugs and become lifetime consumers. That is the sad truth.

It is the sad truths that are connected to the larger miasma of depression and mental illness that has settled over Canada.

***

I have said it before and I will say it again. If you aren't depressed you aren't paying attention.

There is a reason why and it's time for people to stand up

Throw open their windows and scream out,

"I am sad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore."

It is time to speak up but not just acknowledge the pain but seek for the truth.

There is so much that is not right. So much that makes no sense. So much that we cannot speak about. The ghosts in the many rooms of the house we now live.The Overlook Hotel had nothing like this. This feeling that we are being driven blindly towards the cliff. At best buffalo and at worst lemming.

It is an assault on the minds of young people to teach them one thing while the awful truth lay bare before them. Revelation of the ongoing genocide that is the foundation of Canada and is reflected daily in actions of resource companies and official government policy is a stab to both the heart and mind.

They tear the truth from your heart and treat you like a fool
This is the journey to enlightenment for open minded Canadian youth

*

I have found sanity and joy in ceremony and in life.
I greet the sun with smile and can hug a tree until I cry.
I am blessed I know and still at times the darkness comes
and doesn't let me go until he is done.

*

Too much drinking and drugging
and hating and sulking have taken away
all you can give

Whatever it takes to get a smile on your face
If a prayer or a toke or a cry or a joke

There is only one thing I can say
The sun is shining today
And that's more
than a reason
to live

****

I was wrong about the Lone Ranger

A little while ago I tweeted the cover of Rolling Stone magazine featuring Johnny Depp in Tonto costume and make and words like "Johnny Depp strikes a "I can crap out Native American stereotypes as easy as this" kind of thing. It was funny enough, but it was mostly bitter.

I had seen the commercials for Lone Ranger . I thought the movie looked horrible. In the sense that every movie looks horrible these days. Things are blowing up and flying at you from this future or that past and everything in between. All in stimuli crushing 3D.

Lone Ranger seemed to be another in a line of Depp Films that for me includes all the Pirate sequels, Alice in Wonderland and Dark Shadows that left me cold. Yet, the box office success for these films other than Shadows have been astronomical.

I was trying to remember the last time I had enjoyed Depp in a performance. It would have to be Sleepy Hollow, if you don't include Rango. He is one of the great actors of this generation and I no longer anticipated any of his work. I watched some of all of his recent films and it is not for me although I am looking pretty harshly at Tim Burton who also lost me after Sleepy.

Then I read about Depp getting paid $65 million for some of these films, maybe more and it just seems crazy. I thought if Young Depp could travel to the future would he kill Old Depp. I asked myself the same question a few years back when I was working in Ottawa, I didn't work out well for me.

Then there was The Tonto thing. The talking Tonto thing. The monotone monosyllabic Tonto thing. Where you got the feeling that the Lone Ranger considered Tonto only slightly more intelligent than Silver.

What is Tonto? It is not a Native American trope although we like to see it that way. He is the stereotypical other who helps the White protagonist for no other reason other than he is White. A dynamic which appears over and over again in American and Canadian popular culture.

He is also Native American and through a history that began with a radio show and continued onto movie newsreels, comic books, television and film; Tonto has become the single most enduring fictional Native American character in history.

Why would Depp who claims Native American ancestry, who directed a Native American themed film "The Brave" in his debut as a director and who starred in one of the most critically acclaimed films of recent years with a Native American theme "Dead Man" take this job?

Why in the world would Depp take on the most stereotypical Native American characters in all of popular culture? Why? Why? Oh, yeah. $65 million dollars.

So, I wasn't going to see it. I was going to mock the movie in advance and that was it. But, I did see it with only minor protests. My family was visiting from out West we had planned to see a comedy but all films were sold out. It was cheap Tuesday. The only film available was Lone Ranger. "All right, I will go. And I promise not to complain loudly, yell at the screen or laugh inappropriately as dramatic scenes that are not working".

The film reset the Tonto character as someone who is outside of his own world. He doesn't' have a tribe. He grew up alone obsessed by both vengeance and guilt. He isn't a Sidekick. He is someone into whose story the Lone Ranger enters.

Depp may be mugging to the camera and eating scenery like the shark in Jaws but in the Native American history of the clown and the Trickster it is absolutely what the performance requires. When an actor goes over the top it is often labelled a Vanity performance and when you take producer credit the whole film become a Vanity Project. There is are scenes early in the film that blow that notion up and ones that caused a bigger audience response that any of the special effects.

Armie Hammer the actor playing the Lone Ranger cuts an imposing 6' 4". Depp is not Hollywood short, but he is regular people short. Those scenes where he is walking side by side with Hammer sometimes with the camera shooting them from above. He looks really, really short. In one scene Tonto is referred to a "crazy little Indian".

This is not how it is done in Hollywood. No one calls Tom Cruise short.

Height has always been the greatest special effect ever created by Hollywood. It's like he's saying how can you trust Hollywood to tell you history when the whole thing is smoke a mirrors.

When the film starts to drift into Native American fantasy and a character is revealed to be a cannibalistic Windigo you wonder once again if the stereotypes of old Hollywood are creeping into the film. Spoiler alert, it turns out that some people are just evil.

It is all splash and entertainment and it is all of little consequence. Yet, the speech that matters, the most heartfelt oration of the movie comes from Chief Ten Bears, played by Saginaw Grant. There is no Tonto speak from the Native American actors. It is the most real thing in the film. It is a completely authentic and exists uniquely in the landscape of contemporary cinema.

If Depp's star power and all the smoke and mirrors in Hollywood can get you to hear that speech that that is the only thing that matters. That is not vanity, that is the heart and soul that still exists in one of Hollywood's biggest stars. '